Blog Comments & Posts

It really depends on your industry and who you are competing against. The NYT is not competing against tabloids. (Obviously.) Marketing companies are competing against other marketers and the rules of the game are slightly different. However, we believe that content should deliver on the promise of the headline, not make empty promises. I often ask writers to rewrite the headline because I think the content contains a lot more value than the headline advertises.

To me this feels like doing an A/B test on an email subject line and then choosing the loser because you hate clickbait. The new headline won the "test" so we're rolling with it. It's not our fault that readers generally like lists that start with numbers! We try lots of different styles of headlines but lists continue to do really well when they fit the intent of the query. (Queries that include the word "examples" definitely are looking for lists)

Hi, I work at WordStream. I disagree that changing a title to be more clickable necessarily equals "clickbait." The reason we didn't change anything else about the article is that the article was already really good! It was a popular article with lots of shares and comments and lots of organic traffic already. We just thought it could get more traffic with a better headline. The article delivers on the headline, so how is that clickbait? If people weren't satisfied with what they got after clicking, they'd bounce/pogo and that would be a negative signal to Google. (And to be clear, I changed the headline hoping to get more clicks/traffic even if the rank DIDN'T change.)

It doesn't make sense to write an awesome article and then sabotage it with a mediocre headline. The headline is just one of the many parts that send quality signals to Google.

We photobombed your post! ;) Elaborating a little on the how & why questions, we've found that the best way to get the snippet is to answer COMPLEX questions better than anyone else on the page, and to be sure the article includes snippet-able (self-contained) chunks of text. Little more on this strategy here: http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2015/10/13/google-answer-box

I just wrote about something very similar over at WordStream! What I'm calling "intent marketing" - a kind of next-level iteration of SEO + content marketing (though it applies to other kinds of marketing too). Good stuff.

Useful model in that grid. I've found that copmlex questions in the web x informational box are great to go after and it's amazing if you can rank in the featured snippet for those. Dumb questions in the IPX x informational box are a waste of time because anyone (including Google) can answer them just as well. No reason to click through.

You said "Every door that has been opened for me is because of a man in this industry." I think the goal of this post is that in the future, more doors are opened by women -- not anything against men, but these tactics may allow more women in on the ground floor who can then rise into management positions and open doors for others.

"a male marketer with between 5-10 years of experience earns an average of $15,000 more than a female with the same amount of experience. The gap grows even larger with 10 or more years experience to an amazing $30,000 difference between men and women."

We did an internal study at WordStream earlier this year and found that our women client services reps were being undervalued by our clients (i.e. they got lower approval ratings even when they performed better than their male colleagues). When interviewed, most of them said they didn't feel that they were being dinged or held back because they were women. Nonetheless, the numbers certainly suggested that they were.

I don't disagree with your comment, just want to respond briefly to this:

"For example, I wrote an article sharing the best business books for photographers. As you can see, my article is showing up second in the Google Alert preview."

And in that "best business books for photographers" was the link.

That's kind of odd. I mean, rather than make "article" the link -- which is the logical word to link to -- you went for the description, a link that was keyword-rich.

I truly think it's more logical to link to "best business books for photographers" in almost every instance -- links are like boldface or italics in that they draw the eye, and using specific anchor text makes text more scannable. Using generic anchor text like "article" or "click here" makes the reader do a little more work. Yes, I know SEO's have a history of abusing anchor text and Google is pissed about it, but that doesn't mean we have to take Google's position that all anchor text links are evil. I still think they are more user-friendly. This is why Google used anchor text in the algorithm in the first place.

"It has long been argued that 'women don't ask,' the report states. We found little evidence to support this claim when considering career advancement strategies that rely on asking for opportunities. Women were more likely than men to ask for a variety of skill-building experiences, to proactively seek training opportunities, and to make achievements visible, including asking for feedback and promotions....In fact, the study authors offer another theory -- the problem is not that women don't ask, but that men don't have to."

Hi Kate, thanks for linking to my recent post on the WordStream blog! I agree with you that guest posting as an SEO tactic isn't inherently good or bad. The reason we're easing up on it lately is because a) we don't have enough content producers on staff to create great content for own blog and guest post too, so we have to choose our battles, and b) we've gotten to a point of diminishing returns after guest posting for years. We do still keep our eyes out for amazing opportunities to contribute a post, and make the effort when we think it's worth it.

The Golden Rule works for almost everything, doesn't it? Thanks again!

Great post Kieran! I recently wrote on a similar topic -- in addition to content types it can be helpful to think about keyword types. In other words, ask yourself: What are my goals? Who would I be targeting? What kinds of keywords would they use to find this information? What kinds of content best fit those keyword types? You can find some examples here.

"I didn't want the history of the company, I WANTED SOME ^$%#@ FRIED CHICKEN!"

Ha!

I've had the opposite thing happen, where I specifically wanted the Wikipedia page for a given company but searched for it on Google, and got the dumb brand pages instead. I've even committed the famous faux pas of Googling "Google" for this reason.